A bit less insomnia overnight, but this time we both had to be out by 7:30 or so. I had 9:30 a.m. court in Rochester (a monumental waste of time, as it turned out), and Eleanor had finished Thingamabob to take to Emily to install her camera on for her independent senior film project. We got to the apartment before 9, offloaded, and I headed for court while they worked out the details of the setup. All systems seem go, and Eleanor is justifiably proud of what she made.

I then headed over for a bunch of internal conferences at the office there before claiming Eleanor from the Wegmans nearest to Chez Em. We got home around 1:30, just in time for me to go get my own car fixed. Not only did it get done on time and within budget, but our local mechanic, God bless him, even had a possible solution to the chime issue on Emily's car from the day before. When I told him it had been diagnosed as a $900 computer module job, he frowned in agreement, but then said, "Hey- ya know? One of my customers got an aftermarket chime connected right to the headlight circuit, and it worked fine- he just needed me to make it louder."

There follow the usual warnings about how NOT to do it, then some pretty straightforward details on how it's done.

I'll probably give Erin the shot at the labor on it, but I'll know when Eleanor has read this, because I'm sure I'll hear her gears grinding as she tries to work it out herself:)

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We ended the day with two nice things:

* A Netflixed film with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway titled Love and Other Drugs, a send-up of the pharmaceutical industry, pain and suffering generally, and various manifestations of geekiness. It wound up being far more touching and profound than we might have expected.

* A blog has been set up to collect and publish letters to our local Methodist Bishop, who is now handling one of the several impending church trials in our area (two in the NY conference to our south and another in the adjacent conference in PA), from members and clergy opposed to the idea of charging ANYBODY for solemnizing same-sex marriages or actively BEING same-sex oriented. As of this writing, 13 such letters have been published on the site, including this one, previously referenced here:

Maybe now I'll get a response. I've also been asked to make a formal presentation to our own lay leaders a week from Tuesday about what steps we are prepared to take in this direction. I will be preparing that before the end of the weekend.

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Tomorrow promises to be cooler, and quieter. I can use a little of both after the past few days....

You know I was raised Catholic, but I am not really in the Church anymore because I'm gay and the Church's official stance is that I am somehow hopelessly broken. The hierarchy claims that the think I should be treated with love and compassion yet everything they do says otherwise.

When I think about this, it hurts. I did not do anything to deserve the exclusion from that community other than be the man that God intended me to be.